Roche trained as an architect before turning to painting, studying at Glasgow School of Art and in Paris. In the early 1880s he joined the Scottish colony of artists at Grez-sur-Loing. On his return to Scotland he became one of the more important members of the Glasgow Boys, commissioned alongside Guthrie, Walton, Lavery, Henry and Hornel to paint murals for Glasgow’s International Exhibition of 1888. Later in Roche’s career a cerebral haemorrhage paralysed his right hand but he taught himself to paint with his left.